


Yuan's guild to stalking

by Kasan_Soulblade



Series: Of Shattered Glass/These Warped Perspectives [18]
Category: Tales of Symphonia
Genre: Because Yuan isn't an assassin and should stop trying, Because she's persistant and Yuan's no match, Gen, Renegades fail at spying, Revenge however is the sweetest brew, Yuan/Botta friendship, before Raine's beatings cause brain damage, taking revenge hot not cold
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-12
Updated: 2014-03-12
Packaged: 2018-01-15 11:27:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1303189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kasan_Soulblade/pseuds/Kasan_Soulblade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wasn't a spy, he also wasn't a killer.  But when one ran a secret organization trying to save the world sometimes these little chores fell into the worst possible hands.  The bruises would heal, eventually, but Yuan's ego... that would smart for quite a while afterword.</p><p> </p><p>Tentative Au, part of the  "Those Who Gazed At Heaven" but was not incorporated in to Shards directly. It's related enough to be part of this series.  An answer to the "who was that stalking the Sylvarant Chosen's group" at the inns side quest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yuan's guild to stalking

**Author's Note:**

> This is an old work, somewhat edited to make it mesh with my most recent style and hopefully with all the errors all cleaned out. Very minor spoilers for Shards and for Tales of Symphonia, but very minor indeed. Set during the Regeneration Journey and before the first Tower visit and more an effort to start exploring Yuan and a very odd side quest than anything else.

Some people weren't meant to be stalkers... It was a long lesson, slow in coming, and in his case perhaps more slow in its coming then for most others.

Flexing his fingers, setting the gloves to crinkling against his skin he crouched under a window in the back of the phoenix inn. He pressed on pointed ear against a crack in the wall, a crack he had made with his dagger, and his hearing was enough so that the small slit was all he needed. Even as he eavesdropped on the girl child, his target words of determination filtered through his mind. He wasn't going to fail this time! This time he had to do it, he had to succeed. There was too much at stake to allow another failure to come to pass. Adjusting his cloak behind him the half elf heard another familiar voice from the room he listened in on now. He winced as the voice brought back several painful memories, and it was in this moment the beginning of his revelation descended, as fast and hard as the staff that the woman made him think of...  
 _  
"Ekkk! Raine there's some werido in our room!"_

_"You pervert!" In the midnight gloom he had not seen the staffs decent but he had certainly felt it. Dazed by the hit Yuan staggered out of the small room in Triet's inn. The woman was coming after him, shrieking that she was going to castrate him. For the first time in centuries Yuan was scared, that woman would follow through with her threats if she captured him, he knew it. Fear as his guild he ran into the next room blindly, slamming the door behind him. Merciful luck was clearly on his side as the young woman within was his target. She stared at him in sleep mussed confusion. Gods, he was going to kill Botta! The fool had given him the wrong room! He approached the young woman, she looked at him, confusion on the decline. Still… her response was.. odd. She rubbed her eyes, stretched whilst sitting up, all in all she was quite unconcerned at his appearance never mind the yelling. She blinked at him with budding confusion when he did not magically disappear in to whatever dream fancy she thought had spawned him._

_"Oh hello, I'm sorry but this is my room..."_

_"I'm well aware of that." He drew a knife from his belt._

_She saw the knife, and her eyes went wide. The little boy’s screams had been loud, but this girl was so shrill he could feel his eardrums try to shatter. She shrieked in terror, hopped back, fel back in a tangle of fear an blanket. Yuan cursed his enhanced hearing. Guided by surprise and from excruciating pain he staggered back, her follow up shriek made him clutch his ears and whimper. He toppled out into the hall in his mindless retreat, and it was only when he was sprawled over the floor, right at the feet of the elf woman that he remembered that he’d shut it behind him._

_She had a staff._

_Raise and spiked was all the impression he could pick up from it before it descended. The strike between his ears did little damage but set the headache to migraine levels._

_"You leave my students alone!" The staff connected, frilly spikes first, "You sick..." another hit something tore, even as he managed to roll onto his belly, "perverted..." Gods where did this woman get such a good aim?- "son of a..." Yuan brought his arms around to shield his head from more blows and managed to get from kneeling to running in record time. He ran down the stairs, tripped on the rug by the front door and groaned. Two male voices from outside broke off whatever conversation had carried them thus far back, urged on by screaming and profanity he could hear them coming back to the inn._

_Running back to the inn actually, if the scrape of sand and door meant anything._

_"Damn!" He growled under his breath as scrambled to his feet a second time. The door slammed open, Yuan was threw himself into the first, nearest room to where he was. Something long and wooden poked his back, the smell of dust and soap indicated that it was likely a closet for the cleaner. Still he didn’t waste time to see where he was. No screaming occupant was the only requisite of this abode, that and a door he could close mostly and watch the inns entrance. The two swordsmen charged into the inn with swords clattering and boots stomping like the louts they were._

_"Colette, Professor, what's going on?"_

_"Are you alright?" Yuan mentally cursed, he knew that speaker far too well._

_"Kratos... There was this strange elf in my room!"_

_The girl sounded like she was in tears. From his hiding spot Yuan snorted. A mistake._

_"Hush, did you hear that?"_

_"Hear what?"_

_"I heard it too... it came from behind the door."_

_Crap! I can't be seen, he'll know and..._

_"No from that closet, it came from this one!" There was a thud from a door below and back. Some animal must be trapped in the closet and was making a racket. Smirking, since luck was back on his side some gloating was expected, Yuan waited until both heavy set of boot falls were occupied elsewhere_

_"I could have sworn..." Kratos muttered._

_"Come on! Let's get him! No one hurts Colette while I'm around!"_

_"Lloyd, wait!"_

_Now! Drawing his cloak over his head Yuan charged from his hiding spot, but he had miscalculated. The woman with the staff had not run off with the others. She’d been kept busy tending tears and the like most likely. But now, freed up of obligation and with a bit of skepticism akin to Kratos’ she’d lingered and for lingering saw. She also was one of those people who acted. How he hated those._

_She blocked him from escape, staff in hand and descending with a near musical whistle. He barely managed to dodge the hit that would have laid him out on the floor, then spotting a kitchen behind her, a bit right and away from the investigating swordsmen, he sheathed his dagger and darted about the woman. If the half elf had any sympathy for her kinsmen she would let him go, certainly he had suffered enough..._

_"Kratos, Lloyd, he's going for the back door!"_

_There were two voices that snarled oaths, Yuan heard them turning around, coming after him. But he managed his escape, more virtue of speed than anything else. The kitchen was empty and he managed to get out the inn’s back door unscathed._

_Well at least he thought he was unscathed until the scent of burning fabric told him otherwise. Cursing he ripped his cloak off, hopped up and down on it, until the fires were extinguished. _

_Then of course there was the incident at Asguard, he had slipped into the room, a little surprised that the adults would be allowing the boy swordsman and the Chosen to share a room. It didn't matter though what they did, what mattered was that the boy slept like a rock. No one would hear him do this grim work, no alarm would be raised, he'd slash the girl’s throat and it would be over with..._

_"Halt!"_

_Steel snapped through the air. He hopped back, surprised to see the mercenary rise out of the blankets like a nightmare. It didn't help that the man's tunic was off, thank the merciful gods that that was all he wasn't wearing. Having no choice but to run he went for the door praying Shadow was merciful in screaming his face from that one’s eyes. The younger swordsman had taken the floor, had given his elder the bed, he sat up looking stupidly around at the yelling. Yuan staggered over the boy’s neck ribbons, causing some stalling drama as the boy was set to gagging. That’d slow Kratos down… Still it wasn’t his best escape, but best of not he slammed into the door, it swung open as he had only partially closed it behind him, not quite trusting that hinge… The hinge, even Kratos, wasn’t the problem this time. No, not when looking up revealed the sight that had haunted his nightmares since Triet._

_"You again!"_

_He could have said the same thing._

_The staff descended, - Wasn't there a time when the woman wasn't armed?- so he ran. Took a few hits, and made a break for the stairs. The Chosen looked at him stupidly from across the hall, and he should have just done the deed then and there. A thrown knife while not as sure as a slashed throat might work. The decision was taken out of his hands when the crazed woman with the staff kept pace with him. Descidingk there was a time for assassinations and this was not it –the woman’s hollering that she was going to grind off his maleness for bothering them again helped the decision process along quite nicely- Yuan focused on out and only out._

_Had he time though, he would have protested the woman’s screamed accusations. Him bothering them? They weren't the ones covered in bruises, suffering from searing headaches, and with psycho half elves after them shrieking in obscene detail the torments that were to come if he was caught. He scrambled in the last stair, and Gnome be damned if it weren’t another throw rug that caught him up. He landed sprawled out on the common room floor, the exit a few feet away. The ammrouched, the staff descended… and smacked him on the rump. Was she... spanking him? If it hadn't hurt so much he might have been laughing at the total stupidity of that thought. As it was he yelped in pain, and made yet another unglamorous retreat out into the night.  
_  
Then there was the incident in PalmaCosta where his informants had sent him to the wrong inn... And the woman whose room he had intruded on had been a chief. His head ached as he recalled the ringing blow she had delivered to him via a skillet. And then that _other_ incident in Asguard, and then all those times at the Houses of Salvation.

He sat for a long moment, then with a numb sort of budding horror counted up all the failed attempts on his hands, He found that he would have needed to barrow a whole set of hands and a foot just to cover all his blotched attempts. His cloak, -he had gone to none of his offices to re-stock on anything- bore the scorch marks of fire, of lighting mana, a few holes from knife thrusts, and his armor had two slash marks delivered from twin blades.

He wondered, just a bit bitterly if they made bets on who he was going to harass at each inn.

He wouldn't have been surprised.

For a long moment he considered going in yet again, then he rubbed his aching scalp. Not everyone was cut out to be an assassin, he finally admitted to himself. But maybe he had someone else who was suited to the job, certainly after so many wrong leads the one upon his mind deserved a little punishment. Yuan walked away from Luin's inn, no sneaky entrances noted, bold as could be he walked out of town. Stelth would not avail him here. Once at the edge of Luin he drew out a small magi tech voice transmitter.

"Put me through to Botta..." There was a wait, then a familiar voice said the password, Yuan in return said the counter password. Formalities done the Renegade leader decided it was time to get even with his subordinate. "Botta, I have something to tend to, I need you to take over with assassinating the Chosen. She's in Luin, the Phoenix Inn. I want her dealt with tonight. Take my Rhieard."

"But sir... certainly you should deal with the..."

"No Botta, don't argue just get down here." Yuan considered offering a warning, then decided against it. "Consider this punishment for the last false lead."

"Sir being entrusted with such a task would be an honor, not a punishment."

"Good man." Yuan smirked, fought down his laughter. "Get over here as fast as you can, I need to tend to something in Derris Kharlan, so I will be out of touch in the immediate future. Good luck on your new assignment Botta."

"Thank you sir."

"No, thank _you_. I expect a full report on your success tomorrow night.”

“Of course sir.”

Conversation done the device in Yuan’s hand died, with a musical chirrup no less. Still as Yuan pocketed he found he was smiling, and smiling so wide it hurt.

Botta’d need more than luck, but Yuan’s well wishes weren’t wholly insincere.

Just mostly.

 


End file.
